Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Alex Andrews <alex AT recordsonribs.com>]

Opps - "often this works out fine" the sentence should finish.

Alex

On 14 December 2012 07:47, Alex Andrews <alex AT recordsonribs.com> wrote:

But the NC licences don't allow 'weak commercialism' any more than they allow 'strong commercialism'. They ban both industrial and non-industrial uses of the resource. If you use NC to stop Walmart, you stop the band playing in a club as well. That's one reason why I prefer CRR: because it explains what the licence term does, which is exclude bands and community groups from the NC Commons as well as Walmart and Monsanto.

Is it me, or does it reflect an impoverished understanding of the world if there can only be 'weak commercialism' and 'strong commercialism'? Things are more subtle than this. In reality the fuzziness of the license works out fine. This is because 'the law' is not an abstract entity that 'works' simply by virtue of existing. It has to be enforced. The license holders in each situation are part of the equation.

As I've said before, all of our artists release under a NC license. All of them would be fine with a local band, charity or community group using their work, indeed, this very thing has happened. As they would see this as 'non-comme rcial' use, even if in some cases it is formally a little fuzzy. None of them would be fine with the Walmart situation. The only time we have issued a DMCA notice was when a Russian site was re-selling MP3s from us. Our artists are fine with redistribution of their music, which is why they chose CC-NC. They were not fine with the music being placed behinds a for profit walled garden where users would assume they could not download them gratis elsewhere.

We'd maybe like to see a more explicit definition of Non-Commercial - to specify community groups and libraries were okay - but in reality, often this . This would clear up some of the ambiguity. None of this discussion changes the fact that allowing a commons, but for non-commercial use is the primary reason people use NC - the most popular license. People are fine with any person continuing the creative use of their work, or sharing it far and wide (against the prevailing IP culture - a break we should not forget is hugely radical). CC should surely embrace the weakened IP mindset here. They are not fine with people profitting from it. 

But this has far more to do with encouraging a culture of sharing, changing people's mindset that it is okay to share IP or add to it, than attempting to have Commercial Rights Reserved. *Creative Commons* Non-Commercial (emphasis on the commons) makes this clear. Commercial Rights reserved does not.

Alex

--
Records On Ribs - a record label that releases all its music for free download under a Creative Commons license
http://recordsonribs.com

--
Records On Ribs - a record label that releases all its music for free download under a Creative Commons license
http://recordsonribs.com